The gates come down. The lights are flashing. The train is coming. Let’s cross the tracks!
It’s under discussion.
I’m not sure that was a deliberate act of gross stupidity. It looked to me that the car actually skidded out of control across the trainline, because the driver didn’t slow down at all on approach to the boom-gates.
But I’m prepared to be wrong. 
At the very start of the video, you can see the same SUV crossing in the other direction as the gates start to come down. It then makes a U-turn, apparently assuming it got lucky the first time, so what could go wrong. In the other discussion, the intersection was identified as an entrance to Reliant Park. I’m guessing the park and entrances were closed, so the driver mistakenly drove in and had to turn around, and at that point their brain stopped functioning.
From the video - “Can This Sneaky SUV Sneak Past a Train?” No. No, they cannot.
I hope they’re not having a discussion about needing to change the train crossings because of this yahoo - that’s what always happens here. Some idjit pays more attention to their phone than where they’re going and gets creamed by a train, and there’s always an outcry about how there needs to be more bells and arms and flashing lights.
Might not do any good. Not far from me are two drawbridges that open to let ship traffic through. Within a few years, we have had two incidents that could easily have been fatal. Both were caused by confusion on the part of the driver, exacerbated by absolute, total incompetence (IMHO) of the bridge tenders.
In the first incident, a driver started across the drawbridge as the gates came down, the lights started flashing, and the bells started clanging. If she had just continued at normal speed, everything would have been fine, but she didn’t. The lights, bells and gates caused her to panic. First she stopped, then she backed up, then she went forward. Meanwhile the idiot bridge tender, who never looked out the window, started raising the bridge with the woman’s car on it.
After hearing a lot of annoying honking from the cars, the bridge tender thought it might be a good idea to look out the window, and made the decision to keep the bridge from tossing the car away, so he stopped it in time (at about 45 degrees).
In the second incident, an RV was crossing the other bridge when the gates came down, the lights started flashing, and the bells started clanging. If he had continued across the bridge, everything would have been fine, but he didn’t. He panicked and stopped. Past the gates, so he couldn’t back up. He noticed that the drawbridge was going up in front of his RV, so he thought he would be safe. What he didn’t know was for every ton of drawbridge that goes up, a ton of counterweight comes down, which is one damn good reason the gates are there.
The multi-ton counterweight came down smoothly on top of his RV, reducing its height to a go-cart. The driver escaped unsquashed, just in time.
Where was the bridge tender? Out to lunch, I guess. He wasn’t looking. Makes you wonder what they pay these guys for, doesn’t it?
None of the bridge tenders lost their jobs. Instead, they got commendations for meritorious service. Thousands of bridge cycles and only two accidents. A near-perfect record!
It probably wouldn’t, but that never stops people from outcrying. There are lights flashing, the arms come down, there are bells ringing, there’s a huge 40 ton train bearing down on you - you can’t make people pay attention if all of that isn’t enough to tip them off that it’s time to stop driving/walking/biking.
Not at all. Wheels didn’t slip even slightly; the SUV was going exactly where the driver steered it to go.
Indeed. That was no uncontrolled slide, that was the driver trying to go around the bar.
On edit: Watching it again, the first time the SUV crossed was most likely well after the lights turned red, too. Look at the position of the bar at the start of the video. Way too close to down to have been a legal crossing.
It doesn’t look anything like that to me. He turned right, then left, then right, then left, a course that took him smoothly through the gates. It looked like he was in full control, at least after the first approach to the gates.
There was plenty of time to slow down after the gates came down and the lights were flashing too. Even failure to slow down was an act of gross stupidity.
I think kambuckta’s guess about skidding is because you can see the SUV swinging around when it first comes into view, as if it was sliding sideways. However, that’s because it was making a u-turn, not skidding. It was in full control the whole time.
I like the way the driver slows down and angles his SUV to prepare to merge onto the parallel street, ensuring that he spends that vital extra second in the Joy Zone.
Yeah, the more I think about that, the more I think this may have just been a supreme brain fart moment rather than the intentional race against the train moment I thought it was in the other thread. You’d think that the gate and the bells and the lights would clue you in, but if the driver was so zoned out and distracted by a dead end and a U-turn, I could somehow understand it. It would help to explain the completely oblivious behavior as he slows down on the center of the tracks.
That’s kind of what I’m charitably trying to think. He drives into the park entrance, sees that it’s closed, and turns around. At that point he see the gates and figures they are down because the park is closed, so it’s not a big deal to go around them.
Apparently, you can only get so stupid before it becomes fatal. There is a reality-enforced upper limit on stupidity.
Quite logical, except for the flashing lights, bells and barrier arms which are just there to fool you. And that big-ass train with your name on it.
I give up. How stupid CAN you get?
I want this on a bumper sticker.
The problem I have with this is people trying to get the entire world to change to allow them to increase their stupidity upper limit.
That suggests a certain degree of … intelligence … not consistent with their other behavior.